Geneviève Almouzni

Deputy Director of the Institut Curie (Paris, France) - Director of research at the CNRS, head of the Nuclear Dynamics and Genome Plasticity unit, a mixed structure between the Institut Curie and the CNRS.

Geneviève Almouzni is director of research at the CNRS, head of the Nuclear Dynamics and Genome Plasticity unit, a mixed structure between the Institut Curie and the CNRS. Her team, chromatin dynamics, over the years has conducted research on chromatin, histone variants, histone chaperones and nuclear organization with a particular interest on heterochromatin. Her general objective has been to dissect the mechanisms of chromatin assembly, from the basic structural unit, the nucleosome, up to the higher-order structures in the nucleus.

In addition, her work on specific nuclear domains has unveiled the importance of non-coding centromeric heterochromatic regions, which are of major importance for chromosome segregation and relevant for cancer. Her lab has exploited a variety of tools and models to understand the in vivo functions of chromatin dynamics (e.g. Xenopus, mouse) that combine biochemistry, cell biology, and developmental biology. These integrated approaches from molecules to tissue and a whole organism are actively pursued in particular within the network of excellence EpiGeneSys, to move epigenetics towards system biology (www.epigenesys.org) for which she acts as the scientific coordinator.